Curator: Sorin Heller

Review

Hannah Megged's present exhibition summarizes three years of creativity, 2001-2004. This is a series of crystallized acrylic paintings on canvas in a relatively large format. These paintings are a continuation of Megged's preoccupation with the abstraction of landscape and the translation of actual forms into the values of painting.

 Megged persists in the approach she has developed over more than 50 years of abstraction by a calculated drawing scheme in which the final product. The painting may be called "cultural," perhaps even "beautiful," which today, in an era where the differences between high and low art are blurred, may seem anachronistic, borrowed from another era, modernism.

Megged does not hide it. The opposite is correct. She clarifies the field of artistic work she deals with, the language of abstraction. And she adds to this, she focuses the painting on a familiar dialectic, already tried and formulated by artists such as Rothko, of the concept of abstraction as a metaphysical conductor, of a hidden secret, a puzzle that accompanies the work. And perhaps also awe on the handsome side, "sublime" in romantic terms. In terms of the means of painting, Megged chooses colors that at first glance look "grating," forcing them to "order," organizing the composition, and harmony. Compared to the previous paintings, the series is characterized by great materiality, layers of color, and almost impasto. But at the same time the point of encounter between the surfaces of color, the mountain, and the sky, for example, creates a line of tension, and concentration. In many cases, the confluence reveals the lower layer, transparent in relation to the materiality of the other color surfaces, the opening that recalls Rothko-Megged's paintings does not hide it. It seems that she does not attach importance to stations in the history of modern art.

What exists for her is painting, blunt, safe, and fun. In the eyes of the series is a summary of her work in a large format. It reaches the perfection of the process of abstraction, of mastery of the painting process, but also of "elegant" strokes. She manages to create a well-made, powerful painting. Perseverance, control, and security make her painting relevant, today, a kind of anchor in a culture of painting, a kind of small, non-vociferous demonstration, about the need to paint, how to paint, the statement of the artist who devoted herself to the work.